


What Happened at the Joneses, or Who Dreams in Vegas?

by Sinking Beatrice (Beatrice_Sank)



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Alternate Identities, F/M, or possible Tulpas, there are dreamers who dream and dreamers who wish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 04:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14324847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Sinking%20Beatrice
Summary: Janey-E is Diane's half-sister. Cooper looks like a successful Dougie Jones. Or is it the other way around ?The Jones' house has a red door.An exploration of the central Belluci's question, based on the idea that each couple could be the fantasy version of the other. It all depends on the way you dream.





	What Happened at the Joneses, or Who Dreams in Vegas?

**Author's Note:**

> " We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream."  
> We all dream. Of a safe place to forget our trauma. Of being a better person than we are. Of standardized love, because that is the story we were told. Of being recognized, free under the light.  
> Red Room, red door.  
> We all dream, as we wait.

  
_Who_  
  
He was always so perfect, unreal. Perfect in a way only Cooper could be, and it used to hurt like hell when he smiled, a gentleness that cut right through her

Only one day he disappeared. Vanished into the woods and left her alone, the tapes blank and the line dead. She dyed her hair.  
And then he came back, and things—now she cannot tell what exactly, has no words left for it—went terribly wrong. He came back, a version of him, and he cut right through her. Erased her, like she was nothing, like she was unreal. After that she refused to see much more.  
So she opened a door in her mind, a place where she alone could go, crossed the threshold and locked herself up. Safe. She built herself a house—in Vegas where everything is fake—put him inside it, a version of him, safe, sound, wedded, attached and then she slowed him down, kept him paralyzed. He couldn't touch her now; only she could, hands on his collar like she did not want to strangle him, hands over his face because she couldn't look at him even if she choked on how much love she had left in her throat.

It's a nice house, full of objects, concrete things to ground her. A silly nickname to protect her from being found again, no matter how many outer voices ask her to come back, and another one to protect him from being himself. They have a son who doesn't look like them. It's good luck. And though rage is still gagging her too, even behind her secret door, it's supposed to be a perfect, dream life, and she plays along.

  
  
_Is_  
  
Things never really worked out as he planned. He used to plan a lot, as a kid—funny for someone like him, most of his life now made of accidents of the will and bad luck. Funny for an insurance broker. Accidents, like the one who took place in a forgotten alley of his left hemisphere, one doughnut too many that clogged his words forever, maybe—what does _forever_ mean now?

He was broke, when it happened, money gone to another bet. And he abandoned Jane, in a way, absented himself from their life just when he was once again failing to transform it into something closer to what he imagined as a kid. He must have watched one James Bond movie too many, and those detective classics, because the images now reel in his brain, again and again, in the close circuit of his damaged synapses, and he watches himself like in a theater: a better self, one who succeeds. One who gambles but always wins, clad in a fine, fitted tuxedo. One who doesn't have to try to seduce or buy women, because all the girls swoon when he does as much as smile—then he refuses them all in the name of true love, in the name of morals. One who beats the villains who want to beat him, instead of doing business with them. One who eats as many pies and drinks as much coffee as he used to do, but who never feels the poisonous effect of saccharose and carbohydrates in his flesh, in his veins. One who is missed when he's gone.

It's an Hollywoodian fantasy unlike any other, spotlights in his eyes all day long, parading on a blue velvet carpet. Jane is there too, looking spectacular, and after he saved her—after he got to save her for once like a true damsel in distress and not the other way around—they kiss for an hour, slowly, like in the movies. She asks him if it's really him, and when he says yes, she believes him.

  
  
_The_  
  
She never believed him when he told her he loved her. Always made clear she thought he was fooling around, flattering his old secretary to get a hot coffee refill. He tried in the tapes, too, and he knew she listened. Now he's unsure of what she will hear, because he has a feeling that his recorder is on, though he's not exactly sure of where he is.

He may have walked into a circle of sycamore trees, remembers the name above all, or he may have dreamed it all, asleep in his room, the waterfall echoing in the distance. In his room, yes, he must be in his hotel room, the wooden floor smooth under his back, a red carpet visible in the corner of his eyes—or is it something else? It seems to be growing. He remembers opening a door, crossing a threshold. Anyway, wherever he is, he must be dreaming as he talks to her, trying to convince her to play along. This investigation has exhausted something deep inside him, and he wants to erase it all: the distorted face of a father who is not one, who doesn't deserve the word; the frozen face of a daughter who was not heard. But there was something else in this town, the wind in the woods and the impression that love was possible again. He was never able to truly envision the future before, but here it seemed achingly real, the only way to end his mission, to finally invent a life that would truly be his own. They could be like those couples he met everywhere, at the diner, in the hotel, in the streets under the lamp posts. Married, happy, allowed to breathe at a slower pace. He would find another job, something that would keep them safe, protected, far from the mishaps of the FBI. They could even have kids. A son... The sounds have a strange ring in this room. Distorted.

This future is so close he can taste it, behind a red door like this one, the color of blood, and that doesn't really make sense since there is little chance that the Diane he knows would be up for this kind of life. But he's not himself right now, and his mind overrides every obstacle. He's describing their life to his recorder, he's almost sure: he can hear his own voice, speaking the words as if to bring the dream to life. Maybe it will. He just has to wait for her to listen to the tape.

  
  
_Dreamer_  
  
Even before the accident, he never really listened to her. Considered there was no point acknowledging a constant string of reproach, because he didn't like the way her voice sounded then. There are days when she forgets why she married him. And now he doesn't even talk, except to echo her, disturbingly.

So, yes. There are days when she lets her mind wander, innocuous daydreams like everyone has. Wishes. She wishes he would have been more responsible, more lawful, a good man of the kind that is so hard to find in this goddam town. She wishes she could go out of the house more, open the red door, breathe. Wishes for something more adventurous and daring, for being allowed to yell at people without feeling labeled as the hysterical soccer mom, one Valium and two percents interest away from a complete burn out. She wishes she could walk in a room and have every eyes on her, get rid of her cardigans and be the only one he really looks at because she would paint her body every color of the rainbow and it would never look the same twice. He would have a better job, well-paid, prestigious, and she would work too, always at his side, his gray eminence, stunning and indispensable. He would talk to her constantly, even when he's not with her. Record everything they do, keep trace of their happiness, document it with jealous care, while she archives it and keeps being the wisest of the two. In this dream they have no children. She's named after a goddess and he after a bandit, a legend, and she takes him to exhibitions, the lights of the city changing the color of her hair, to pretend they're a good version of Bonnie and Clyde, solving crimes, untangling mysteries.

She might lose him to the danger, then. There is always a risk. But they would go down together, not separate like they always seem to be now, never apart again and no door in between them. And though it is too perfect, too unreal, though it hurts like hell, she closes her eyes and she believes it.  
  
_?_

 

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably be updating Magnetic Fields instead, but I wrote this on my phone on the train the other day, so here it is. It's a clearer take on an idea that I began exploring in "Nobody's Wife" (but I realize it was very cryptic at the time). Why in the world would Cooper's tulpa be married to Diane's half-sister? It seems to me that Dougie's life is pretty much the cliché life Cooper must have dreamed for himself at some point, especially when he was in Twin Peaks and caught up in that "small town spirit". On the other hand, Cooper *is* the perfect secret agent cliché a regular loser like Dougie Jones would secretly want to be (and in the show, Dougie originally is in trouble for failing where Cooper always succeeds). After her rape, Diane needs a safe place, and a powerless Cooper to compensate for Mr C. On the other hand, Jane clearly dreams of a different, more exciting life, and is about as delicate as Diane is with crooks.  
> And the bloody red door.  
> At least three of these people have been inside the Red Room at some point. Who knows what you can imagine while you wait.  
> So I don't know who is the double and who is the original, it doesn't really make sense to ask, but is seems to me that it's worth the effort to ask yourself who is the dreamer here.


End file.
